The Guardian

Some drivers are so enraged they’ve resorted to violence in my home town of Oxford. What has brought on this new barbarism?

It reminds me of the school board controversies in the United States. A small group of furious men, whipped up by the media and opportunist politicians, are seeking to turn quiet, practical attempts to protect local people into full-blown culture wars. The further from reality their beliefs diverge, the readier they are to resort to vandalism and violence.

But this isn’t the US, and it’s not about textbooks. It’s playing out in the streets of Oxford. The angry men have resorted so far to arson, angle grinders and physical attacks on local people. What is the frightful cause of these reactions? The council’s efforts to ensure that through-traffic stays on main roads.

George Monbiot is a Guardian columnist

At this time of year, numbers peak for this amazing insect, which can leap to 20 times its height

One of the delights of a dry summer is the proliferation of grasshoppers – or perhaps we are just more likely to see them. There are 11 native UK species, and about another 20 that have been introduced. One of the most common native species is the meadow grasshopper, Chorthippus parallelus, which has the rare distinction that it cannot fly, relying on its amazing springing power to escape predators. Its back legs can fire it off at three metres a second and 20 times its height. This is the equivalent of a human jumping over a five-storey building.

The name, meadow grasshopper, also describes its chosen home, but they appear in gardens and any suitable habitat. They are generally green with a stripe, but sometimes brown and even purple. Numbers peak at this time of year. The slightly smaller males can be seen rubbing their legs against their useless wings to create a “song” to attract the females, which are up to an inch long. It is a regular, if feeble, whirring sound. After mating, the eggs are laid in the soil in a pod ready to hatch the following spring.

Greens leader Adam Bandt has revealed his party will support Labor's climate bill but signalled a further fight for a climate trigger to block new fossil fuel projects. 'The fight begins now to get Labor to stop opening coal and gas mines,' Bandt said while addressing the National Press Club. Prime minister Anthony Albanese welcomed the move, saying it was 'a good day for Australia'. Climate change minister Chris Bowen said the climate wars may not be over, 'but they are suddenly in retreat, under this government'

• Greens give crucial support to Labor's climate bill for 43% emissions reduction by 2030
• Australian politics updates

Families in social housing flats in multimillion pound One Tower Bridge site told games in corridors ‘breached tenancy agreements’

Children living in social housing flats in a multimillion pound riverside development in London have been warned off playing in shared spaces on the site by their landlords.

Parents received letters from City of London council telling them that children playing in the corridors had been recorded on a “noise nuisance app” by a neighbour, and that the games were “a breach of tenancy agreements”.

Fish populations in the Hampshire chalk stream would be harmed if EA gives drought permit, says Fish Legal

Southern Water is being challenged on Wednesday over its attempts to resort to a drought permit to take more water for its customers from a chalk stream as the dry conditions continue, even as the company leaks approximately 88m litres of water a day from its pipes.

The water company is asking for permission to remove more water from the River Test because of drought conditions in the south of England. But Fish Legal has asked for a formal hearing to challenge the attempt to abstract more water. The campaigning legal group says the company has not done enough to reduce water usage by customers or come up with a way to protect fish populations in the river before resorting to a drought permit.

Striking new images show lake has lost nearly half of its surface area from the historical average

New satellite images from the European Space Agency have illustrated the extent of dwindling water levels in the Great Salt Lake in Utah, a month after it reached its lowest water level ever recorded.

Highlighting falling water levels and the decreasing size of the lake, the report compares satellite images from 1985 and 2022. At its peak in the 1980s, it covered about 3,300 sq miles; in recent measurements, it has lost nearly half of its surface area from the historical average. The new record, registered last month, was the second historical low reached in less than a year.

The Coalition could’ve progressed a domestic industry in its nine years in power, but it didn’t

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I understand patience is a virtue, but it’s not an inexhaustible commodity – particularly when a party of government continues to have a lend of the Australian public in such extravagant fashion over such a long period of time.

Peter Dutton has made his captain’s call to oppose Labor’s 43% emissions reduction target for two reasons: to force Anthony Albanese to do a parliamentary deal with the Greens, a situation he senses is risky for Labor politically; and to reserve the right to engage in more weaponised bollocks by blaming rising consumer prices on Labor’s new 2030 target.

Activism works. If we could ban tobacco advertising and sponsorship, we can ban fossil fuel propaganda

• Emma Thompson is an actor and activist

Gondola trips are a traditional part of visiting Venice for those who can afford the steep tourist prices, but I went a little off-script on a recent visit and chose a different, but equally iconic, vessel. We Are Here Venice, an NGO that promotes the safeguarding of a city deeply affected by climate breakdown and countless human-made activities, invited me on board the Greenpeace ship the Rainbow Warrior, the purpose of whose visit was anything but touristic.

I have taken part in two Arctic tours with Greenpeace: one on the Esperanza (now defunct, not my fault!) and another on the Arctic Sunrise. I had previously sailed with two of the crew who are now on the Rainbow Warrior, and there they still were, fighting for climate justice around the world.

Emma Thompson is an actor and activist

Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a letter of up to 300 words to be considered for publication, email it to us at guardian.letters@theguardian.com

No single crisis, no matter how existential, will be enough to shut this machine down naturally. We must break it or it will break us

It is useful to think of capitalism as a robotic savant, spectacularly gifted at doing one thing and cripplingly blind to everything else. Global capitalism is an incredible machine for extracting fossil fuels from our planet, refining them, shipping them to every corner of the Earth and making staggering amounts of money doing so. The humming of this machine, the fuel and the money that it spits out, has powered a century of unprecedented production and consumption by the Earth’s first-world nations. Unfortunately the machine is also poisoning us all. But one of its exquisitely evolved functions is to make it almost impossible to turn it off.

Oil and gas profits in the most recent quarter were astounding. Exxon Mobil made $18bn in profits in the past three months. Shell and Chevron each made nearly $12bn. Those are all record numbers. More major companies will announce their figures this week, and they are all expected to be bountiful. The war in Ukraine, which has devastated a region of the world and displaced millions, has helped energy companies by driving oil and gas prices higher. In this, we see another key characteristic of the machine: the fortunes of nations may rise and fall, but the oil companies will always survive and thrive, floating above the chaos of the world like passengers on a private jet, shaking their heads performatively at all the problems below.

Hamilton Nolan is a writer based in New York

Independent ACT senator David Pocock has given his first speech in the  Senate, warning a sixth mass extinction event is under way. 'Today the systems that sustain life on earth are on the brink of collapse,' Pocock said. 'The climate as we know it is breaking down and the impacts are now being felt with distressing regularity.' 

A request made by Pocock for an Auslan interpreter to translate his speech was denied by the major parties, who were worried about the 'precedent' it would set. The government offered to have screens on the floor of the Senate displaying an interpreter as a compromise

• ACT senator David Pocock denied Auslan interpreter for first speech in Senate
• Tony Burke flags parliamentary inquiry to consider overhaul of Workforce Australia jobs program

New classification would mean a total ban on international trade in the animal’s body parts, as climate crisis and poaching hit populations

Hippos could be added to the list of the world’s most endangered animals because of dwindling populations caused by the climate crisis, poaching and the ivory trade.

The semi-aquatic mammals are found in lakes and rivers across sub-Saharan Africa, with an estimated population of 115,000-130,000. As well as the trade in ivory – found in its teeth – and animal parts, they are threatened by habitat loss and degradation, and the effects of global heating.

Scientists say there are ample reasons to suspect global heating could lead to catastrophe

The risk of global societal collapse or human extinction has been “dangerously underexplored”, climate scientists have warned in an analysis.

They call such a catastrophe the “climate endgame”. Though it had a small chance of occurring, given the uncertainties in future emissions and the climate system, cataclysmic scenarios could not be ruled out, they said.

Higher temperatures mean less snow snow and ice, more rockfalls and more fatalities on Europe’s overcrowded mountains. This cannot go on

The Victorian writer and mountaineer Leslie Stephen – the father of Virginia Woolf – called the Alps “the playground of Europe”. And so they have been, in winter and summer alike, for many generations. But with excessive warming now placing some of the Alps’ most iconic summits out of bounds, for how much longer can the freedom of Europe’s playground continue?

The basic problem is the warming of the Alps. Snowfall this past winter – especially in the southern Alps – was down by two-thirds from what was once considered normal. The loss of snowmelt is a direct cause of this summer’s brutal drought in the Po valley. Last month, Swiss scientists found that weather balloons were having to rise to 5,184 metres (over 17,000ft), well above the very highest peaks, before they finally reached freezing point.

Unchecked global heating will bring once unthinkable extreme heat, with 16 US cities to rival summer highs seen in Middle East

The climate crisis risks pushing many Americans into entirely new climatic realities, with a new analysis finding there are 16 US cities at risk of having summer temperatures on a par with locations in the Middle East by the end of the century.

Heatwaves have roiled huge swaths of the US this summer, placing nearly a third of the population under some sort of heat advisory and driving temperatures to as high as 115F (46C) in parts of the Great Plains. Hundreds of heat records have tumbled, from Boston, Massachusetts, which hit 100F (37C), to Portland, Oregon, which reached 102F (38.9C) on Tuesday.

Fears of future threats to food security if more extreme heat caused by climate crisis hits production

The UK heatwave has caused fruit and vegetables to die on the vine as growers fear the drought and further hot temperatures could ruin harvests this year.

Fruit and vegetable suppliers have been counting their losses after record temperatures in July caused crops to fail.

Further heavy rainfall forecast after deadly lightning strikes and flooding last week

The monsoon season in India and Pakistan is well under way, with further heavy rain events expected in parts of south-west India over the next week or so. The states of Maharashtra, Goa, Karnataka and Kerala in particular could experience rainfall totals above 200mm widely over the next couple of days.

Towards the weekend, this risk could transfer further north and east across India, with 200mm potentially affecting central states. This follows a week when dozens were killed by lightning strikes in India, while hundreds died in severe flooding in neighbouring Pakistan.

I recycle, have cut my meat intake and don’t have kids. And now I have to care about the environment more than ever

I find the environment and the climate emergency the most boring topic on the (burning) planet. When people talk about it, it makes me wish that the planet would succumb sooner rather than later, so I didn’t have to hear one more word about plastic straws and recycling. I flunked my geology exam on purpose, because studying for it was hell. When I see the images of little polar bears on melting ice, I feel nothing.

Once, I posted a clip on Instagram from a documentary I made where I threw a set of scales into a lake to make a point about diet culture. The entire internet was enraged until I posted another video of the producer diving into the lake to pick it up again.

Sofie Hagen is a writer and comedian

Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a letter of up to 300 words to be considered for publication, email it to us at guardian.letters@theguardian.com

In the first of a new weekly column, Guardian Australia’s environment editor argues the Albanese government will be judged on what it actually achieves to tackle climate change

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Last week was a big deal for anyone who cares about faltering efforts to live up to the Paris agreement and tackle the climate crisis. It’s possible that it will come to be seen as something of a landmark. The major step forward was not in Canberra, where an increasingly circular debate is playing out over Australia’s first piece of climate change legislation in more than a decade.

That’s not meant to dismiss the Albanese government’s climate change bill or the crossbench MPs working to strengthen it. The Australian legislation matters, primarily as a confidence boost for investors looking to get behind clean energy and other climate solutions. It sets minimum targets – a 43% cut by 2030 compared with 2005 and net zero by 2050 – and includes some useful transparency and accountability measures. But the reality is there is barely anything in it.

By allowing destructive dredging and bottom-trawling, ministers are undermining wider efforts to protect the oceans

Damage to the world’s oceans generally takes place out of sight, meaning it can be even harder to build momentum behind policymaking than it is to tackle other forms of harm to wildlife. But shocking data gathered by marine conservation NGOs, revealing that 90% of Britain’s marine protected areas (MPAs) are still being fished using the most destructive methods, should serve as a wake-up call. The UK government is officially signed up to a target of protecting 30% of our territorial waters by 2030. So far, action is lagging a long way behind words.

With a desperately needed global oceans treaty due to be negotiated in August , the UK government should live up to its pledges. If nations are unwilling to protect the marine environment in their own waters, the chance of reaching agreement over international ones could slip away. The level of protection provided by the designation of MPAs has been exposed as too minimal to be meaningful. Last year, just 10% were not fished using highly destructive dredging or bottom-trawling equipment – which Greenpeace likens to “bulldozing” the seabed.

Lawns and gardens account for 60% of household water use in arid areas of the US. This is unsustainable

As a heatwave drags across the United States, local and state governments are scrambling to find solutions to the threats brought by record high temperatures. Washington DC and Philadelphia have declared heat emergencies, activating public cooling centers and other safety measures across their cities, while Phoenix and Los Angeles continue to push programs to plant new trees in working-class neighborhoods with little canopy coverage. Many of these short-term solutions rely on water, a dangerous reality given that nearly 50% of the country is experiencing some form of drought, with the amount of Americans affected by drought increasing 26.8% since last month. This looming threat has pushed one state, Nevada, to seek a more long-term solution: the banning of non-functional lawns.

Lawn grass takes up 2% of all land in the United States. If it were a crop, it would be by far the single largest irrigated crop in the country. Nevada has, due to necessity, taken an obvious but large step in alleviating some of the more immediate symptoms of the climate crisis and bought themselves more time for other measures. It is time for the federal government to push all states to do the same and create incentives to ensure that it happens quickly and in a manner that doesn’t force working-class Americans to foot the bill.

Akin Olla is a contributing opinion writer at the Guardian